Bluewire Media made the switch from Netsuite to Basecamp for project management over 3 years ago and we’re loving it. I’ve written about it a few times here but the crux is that it’s a easy-to-use, quick and affordable solution. I recently came across a Software Advice article that shares what they learned during an interview with Ryan Singer, co-designer of the original version of Basecamp. In the article, they cover how 37signals uses Basecamp to manage its projects, and how the creators envisioned that users would utilize their program.…
Continue ReadingToby Jenkins is Bluewire Media’s CEO and co-founder. His native genius is ‘helping others to be their best’ and he practices what he preaches: implementing innovative business and management skills and ethical standards, when directing and empowering the rest of the Bluewire team to learn new skills, embrace innovation and expand their personal horizons.
Toby is a popular keynote speaker and corporate MC, he’s genuinely passionate about web strategy and leading edge management and business practices, and he blogs about these topics regularly. Along with Adam Franklin, he was listed in Dynamic Business’ 2010 Young Guns list of young entrepreneurs and Smart Company’s 2009 Hot 30 Under 30.
Toby is an avid reader, and loves swimming and surfing and all sports generally.
Follow @Toby_Jenkins on twitter or read Toby Jenkins’ blog for more.
Blog posts by Toby
Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York: what’s coming in online business
Bluewire clients James Price and Jeremy Frew from JPAbusiness recently travelled to Silicon Valley, the home of the digital marketing moguls, to gain insight into how trends and changes in the online world are likely to impact business.
As specialist business advisors and transaction brokers, they met with technology ‘incubators’, venture capitalists and senior business leaders in Silicon Valley, as well as Chicago and New York.
I asked Jeremy to share some of what they discovered on their trip – about what’s coming and how it will change the way we all do business.…
Continue ReadingBasecamp vs Netsuite – Why we switched to Basecamp for Project Management
Project Management Before Basecamp:
Bluewire Media is a web marketing consulting business in Australia and we started out building websites.
Initially we were interested in how we could get better and faster at building websites – how could we make sure that we didn’t miss any key ingredients? How could we quality control our work? How could we get faster?
The answer was checklists – lots of them. Over time we developed these checklists for the different stages of our projects – strategy, design, development, deployment.
The checklists definitely helped.
Then we stumbled across our first attempt at project management technology – Netsuite.…
Continue ReadingWhat is a Woo?
Daniel Noble is the former CEO and a Co-founder of WooBoard. His specialisation is in the development of early stage business or mature business in saturated markets within Australia, Asia or the USA. His primary expertise has been the development and application of innovative technology to create new competitive advantage, product innovation or market disruption.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYmXVaa3H94&rel=0&w=560&h=315]
TRANSCRIPT:
Toby Jenkins: Hi. My name’s Toby Jenkins, I’m CEO of Bluewire Media. I’m here with Daniel Noble from WooBoard. Thanks very much for joining in today Daniel.
Daniel Noble: Pleasure.…
Continue Reading5 secs to Multiplier Leadership – Interview with Liz Wiseman
Reading leadership books is one thing.
Implementing them? Putting the philosophies into practice? Figuring out which piece you should do first? Now that is something that can be really daunting in amongst a day filled with high priority, time sensitive issues you need to deal with.
So what to do?
In this post, I interview Liz Wiseman – Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, a speaker and executive advisor. Liz shares some great leadership insights covering business, education, parenting and sport.
It’s a long ranging interview [approx 28 mins] triggered by her new book focussing on the education sector: The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools.…
Continue ReadingWant to win $25,000? 2013 Gamification World Championships, San Francisco
I’ve heard a bit about “Gamification” as a business philosophy over the years – the idea that by applying the principles of game design techniques to non-game experiences, you can help to drive user behaviour. So I thought there might be a few people in our readership interested (and significantly better qualified) to hear that the inaugural Gamification World Championships are on in San Francisco.
Here’s a bit more detail:
Overview
The 2013 Gamification World Championships is a fun, innovative and professional competition that celebrates the highest
standards of Gamification excellence among students and professionals worldwide.…
How to make Coaching Conversations easy using Topgrading Scorecards
Ever since I heard Brian Souza talk about his book, The Weekly Coaching Conversations, at the Atlanta Leadership Summit in May last year, I’ve been experimenting with ways to include it in Bluewire’s routine.
Core Concept
The core concept of the book is that as a manager or leader your primary focus switches from developing your own skills to achieve your results to developing your team’s skills to accomplish collective results. Brian shows how weekly coaching conversations can really help this process.
Putting Coaching Conversations Into Practice
This made sense to me, but putting it into practice – to call up each of our team and talk to them each week – seemed to lack purpose and focus.…
Continue ReadingWhat Steve Wozniak, Charles Darwin and Dr Seuss have in common: Susan Cain
Susan Cain is the author Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and presenter of one of the Top 20 most viewed TED Talks of all time. I had the privilege of interviewing Susan after her keynote at the Inbound conference in Boston.
[If you’re interested in finding out more about the book, here’s another blog post I wrote – 3 Lessons from Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking]
Enter Susan:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hAJQjaEUZ0&rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Here is the transcript:
Toby Jenkins: Susan, thanks very much for taking a bit of time to do this interview.…
Continue Reading3 Lessons from Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Have you ever lingered in the bathroom at a social event to take a few extra minutes to re-gather yourself?
Have you ever found that working alone was much more productive?
Or, on the flip side, that working alone was much less productive?
I can definitely answer “Yes” to all three.
If you’re looking to understand why you answered these questions the way you did, then “Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” might help.
I first saw Quiet’s author, Susan Cain, speak in Boston at Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing conference.…
Continue ReadingHow to create Scorecards for Topgrading
Scorecards for Topgrading
Ahhhh. A new book and new best practice ideas to implement. Thanks so much to Geoff Smart and Randy Street authors of “Who: The A method for hiring”, for sharing their insights to allow us to embark upon our own Scorecards for Topgrading.
So. To enable businesses to hire 90% A Players, “Who” sets out a 4 step process to implement the Topgrading hiring methodology:
- Scorecard
- Source
- Select
- Sell
So we started on the Scorecard and in this post I wanted to share a surprising benefit, what a Scorecard is, why use a Scorecard, how we created our scorecards and an example Scorecard.…
Continue ReadingGratitude At Work
Our goal as a business is to provide an exhilarating, challenging and supportive environment for our team to get the absolute best from each other and for themselves. By doing so, our clients will be the beneficiaries of highly motivated, passionate and focussed people.
Gratitude has a huge part to play in creating this kind of environment.
With reminders in the media about the US tradition of Thanks-giving coming up, it’s timely to share how we’ve tried to embed gratitude at Bluewire Media.
Daily:
We use a fantastic web tool called Wooboard (developed by Pollenizer) to say thanks and recognise others’ efforts.…